


And It's Not Tonight

by thetidesisrising



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alice Cooper deserves better, Alice Cooper needs a hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Protective FP Jones, TW: Domestic Abuse, TW: Kidnapping, Violence, re-estabilshing relationship, tw: depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 03:38:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetidesisrising/pseuds/thetidesisrising
Summary: "Alice woke to hands around her neck."Divergence from 3x21: Alice gets kidnapped by the Black Hood.or, Alice's demons finally catch up with her.





	And It's Not Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Riverdale fandom!! I am so excited to be posting my first work for you guys! I absolutely adore Alice and FP and plan on writing a lot more about them. Please read and review!! Enjoy!! xoxo

Alice woke to hands around her neck.

She struggled and tried to scream, before being yanked by her hair into a sitting position, a square man shoving a gag down her throat. She flailed, but the man was stronger.

“Hush now, Alice.”

She froze in blind terror, comprehension taking her.

“That’s a good girl,” Hal Cooper said, grotesquely combing back her curls. “We’re going for a ride.”

Fear paralyzed her; she barely registered being dragged through long halls and out the door, could hardly feel the mildew of a late spring night against her cheek. He shoved her in the back of a van – or at least she thought it was a van – confounded and reeling. Within the minute – perhaps it was three – Hal’s meaty hands groped her eyes, tightly bounding them with a cotton fold.

At the beginning, her mind was clearer – though ridden with fear – and she estimated that he drove for two hours before stopping, dragging her out of the van and thrusting her into a room. When he removed her blindfold and gag, she realized that she he brought her to a windowless shack with concrete walls and splintering floorboards. He removed her shoes – which puzzled her to no end – and stepped back, his eyes ravishing her.

“You think you’re going to get away with this, you bastard?” Alice spat.

It seemed that in her adrenaline rush she was reduced to the same girl who dominated her Serpent days, reckless and unbelievably rough around the edges.

He laughed sisterly.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Alice.”

She straightened her shoulders defensively, her eyes ice.

“They’ll come for me,” she stated, raising her chin aloofly.

“Oh, trust me Alice, your little boyfriend isn’t coming to save you now,” he snarled.

Alice gagged, the room collapsing in on her like a sinkhole.

Alice knew how it felt to have half of one’s soul sucked from them, screaming for mercy and yet inevitably knowing that none would come. She could not endure that agony again.

“What do you mean?” she bristled, panic bubbling at the base of her throat. “What did you do to him, Hal?”

Hal chuckled humorlessly but did not answer, and with each passing second Alice thought that she might burst. He approached her, cupping her chin with the cool metal of his hook. She fought to breathe evenly, her pupils widening in brazen terror.

“Let’s just say you won’t be seeing FP around anytime soon.”

The pit of her stomach filled with awful, grisly dread. A sob escaped from her lips, and Hal struck her. In the haze of the Farm she had _almost_ forgotten about FP. Cocooned in Edgar’s arms, Alice was enamored with her own form of laudanum, days dwindling till time became one. But in the wake of her abduction – in the blackened hours of reflection – she missed FP with the blaring heat of a wildfire. Yet, she was struck by Hal’s confession, for she truly believed him to be speaking of Edgar. The revelation that FP met his fate at Hal’s hands cut her to the navel, skewering her like the whore her classmates used to call her. In that moment she wanted nothing more than to lay in FP’s arms and bask in his strength.

She sniffled against the force of Hal’s blows, and as he left her to bleed she felt the seeds of resentment and self-hatred that were planted deep within her blossom into a poison bush, and languidly, darkness came.

-

Days trickled by – but she was not entirely sure. Grief shrouded her like a memorial stone, breezy and gray. After three days she could not even recall who she was grieving. Maybe herself?

Each day, inevitable as the dawn, Hal returned. Almost always he taunted her, mostly he beat her, and sometimes he cut her. Rarely, he would sit beside her and confess, her presence an absolving Madonna for his crimes.

“I did this for you, Alice,” he would say, tracing her cheek. “I did all of this for you.”

She would hum in acknowledgement, eyes boring into the concrete wall before her.

Though physically there, she was far, far away. Who was Alice? At this point she did not know, knowledge extending beyond her capabilities. It was much safer to stay sheltered in the void she carved for herself, digging deep within her till nothing but mere atoms remained. For two weeks the cycle continued, till somewhere in there sleeping became waking and waking became sleeping. By the time they found her she was a mummified being, wrapped tightly within herself and incapable of discerning time.

Her memory dissolved into jagged edges:

The dampened, deteriorating floorboards creaked with a distressing sigh as she flexed her curled toes against the splintering wood, piercing splinters prodding her calloused skin. A damp, sanguinary substance dripped from the cracks of her porcelain toes, warming her icy feet as the thickened liquid trickled down her bony ankles.

She could barely register movement – could barely process the embrace of a knife, cool and seductive against her neck. She thought she heard voices but she was not sure; her senses were massacred like the first fall thaw.

She was on the ground long before she recognized the moisture of the verdure dampening her left cheek. Her eyes remained open, but her vision was blurred. The gilded lights danced across her field of vison, and vaguely, she heard a voice shouting for her, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Betty – abruptly, the darkness seized her.

-

“Shhh, shhh.”

She blinked, the fluorescent light beaming. The light was blinding, not at all what the light in her room was like at the Farm.

“Shhh, you’re safe Alice.”

She furrowed her brow, undoubtedly confused.

“FP?” she asked groggily.

The man in question moved closer, softly taking her hands in his own.

“I’m never leaving you alone again, Alice.”

She nodded dumbly, intrinsically numb. She had so many questions: where was Edgar? What about Gladys? For some reason those did not seem as important, and she elected to revel in the feeling of his large, calloused hands upon her small, smooth ones. Her mind was as muddled as a stream after a midsummer’s rainstorm, debris clogging and poisoning it.

She blinked twice and noticed that he was smiling at her. She was profoundly puzzled – how could a man smile at her? FP seemed to misunderstand her bewilderment, leaning forward and pressing his lips to the top of her hand.

“I’ll explain everything later, Al. For now, you need to sleep.”

She must have assented, for shortly there afterwards the darkness returned.

-

Betty visited her the second day.

Alice held FP’s hand as Betty relayed to her the truth behind Edgar’s front. She remained quiet throughout, her eyes locked with her daughter’s. Hearing about Polly’s betrayal struck a nerve in her, and suddenly, soft tears flooded her face.

“Mom, it’s okay, you’re safe,” Betty cajoled, reaching out to hold her other hand.

Alice nodded, willing the tears to stop, but they continued to fall.

“I’m gonna help you through this, Al,” FP soothed, sliding onto the bed beside her.

He glanced over to Betty, and she held his gaze.

“You’re not going to be alone this time.”

He turned back to face Alice, delicately wiping the tears from her cheeks.

Alice flickered between the only two good forces in her life, and in that moment she found her new religion. She nodded minutely but strongly.

“Okay,” she said, her voice a low rasp.

Betty and FP smiled and began talking about their plans for her old house once she was released.

It was only later that she realized she spoke.

-

Alice was released a week later after intense observation. Betty, FP, and Jughead came to pick her up from the hospital, treating her to a burger and shake on the way home.

Home: it was such a deranged concept now.

When they arrived at her old house she was surprised to see the interior mostly clean, though she assumed that Betty forced the other two to tidy up before her arrival. The Joneses definitely redecorated, but she did not have the heart to focus on that now, preferring to sit with FP in the living room in relative silence.

The three of them retrieved her at dinner time, and before long lovely twilight in all of its ashen hues descended upon the house on Elm Street. Before long the emotional tiredness traveled to rest deep within her bone marrow, and she found herself yawning.

“Bed?” FP asked, his voice an invitation.

She nodded, following him upstairs into her former room.

She peeled her day clothes off and shrugged into one of his flannels, brushing her teeth listlessly. She did not have the energy to wash her face, instead climbing into bed and FP’s open arms.

She felt his hands flutter along her back and sides; in the auburn darkness she thought she could see his tense protests. A sudden stability swept over her, an oceanic stasis. The resounding tide soothed her; FP’s fingers, now running through her hair, felt far away, lulling her to sleep. She felt the serene timelessness of a gull high above the waves, suspended mid-flight. The tide receded, the roar of the tumultuous tsunami mounting as it reached its crest, her eyes widening manically as she hyperventilated.

“Al? _Alice!?_ ”

“It was Hal,” she gasped, inhaling deeply as awareness and the world returned.

She thrashed mid paroxysm, her eyes darting about wildly. She felt FP tighten his grip on her, valiantly attempting to still her. She abruptly stopped, her eyes focusing on FP’s. His eyes were filled with panicked agony, but it was the absolute love in his gaze that pushed her over the edge.

He traced her chin with his index finger, his voice low.

“I’m right here, Al. You’re safe.”

She collapsed against the wall, sliding to the floor as she sobbed. FP gently pulled her closer into his chest, cradling her head as she wailed.

She slipped into his arms and he curled around her, arms all-encompassing like a conch shell. She leaned her head against the center of his chest, the beat of his heart as reassuring as the cyclical tide. His fingers traveled up her back to rest at the base of her neck, nimbly working out the knots that resided there.

“FP?” she asked after a while, her voice weighed down by humidity.

He hummed deeply in assent.

“I’m sorry for everything.”

He glanced into her eyes, tilting her chin upwards to capture her lips.

“You don’t have a damn thing to be sorry for, Alice,” FP gruffly replied.

Time trickled by like molasses – a humid languidness. They remained in the moist, twisted sheets, tangled among each other, impossible to discern where one ended and the other began.

“Am I really so impossible to love?”

Her voice was desolate.

“I love you,” he whispered, his tone certain.

She rocked back, visibly shaken.

“You mean that?”

He kissed her jaw.

“Yes.”

He hummed a low drawl, and she found herself easing back into his embrace. He ran his thumb in small circular motions soothingly across the small of her back, and she sighed into his chest.

“We’re going to be okay, you and I,” he said after a little while, kissing her hair.

She burrowed further into his embrace, nuzzling his chin.

“Okay?” he asked softly.

She looked up to meet his gaze.

“Okay.”

             


End file.
